Situation

Samji nodded in agreement with Lieutenant Commander Lire's assessment and said, "The belief is that once we contain and fully secure the Azimuth Horizon and Starbase 10, the Klingons will back down."

He explained further. "The Klingons know they can't win a full on war with the Federation and they will also be having to deal with the other factions too. While they will likely be sending ships through further toward the Sherman system in the guise of open war to try to distract us, their primary goal is here... their only hope is to fight us off enough and destroy Starbase 10 such that they will be given a few hours' worth of time to bombard their side of the anomaly with the ion bursts. They know that's all the time they would have before reinforcements arrive, but it would be enough to exponentially increase the rate of growth toward Federation space. They need the Anomaly to seriously cripple us so that they can then actually attack us in traditional means. If we contain the Anomaly and reinforcements arrive, they have no play."

"The Romulans and the other hostile force I will be presenting next will be a different story. We do not believe they will stop until they destroy us or themselves. But each of these forces is orders of magnitude smaller than that of the Klingons as you stated."

He shook his head in exasperation and with a shrug added, "Other than the major players, we really don't know what we're up against in terms of numbers. Expect the worst and do your jobs well. That's all we can say right now."

Samji's voice perked up. "Our best bet will be to try to goad them into coming for Starbase 10. The base has superior firepower that will decimate even the toughest dreadnaughts they can throw at us." But then he shook his head again and added, "However, with the Klingons, we can't allow them to form a beachhead on their side of the Anomaly, or they will be able to complete their goal anyway. So we have to fight them there too... on the exact opposite side from Federation space."